July 5 – September 9, 2012
Opening: Thursday, July 5, 6 – 9 p.m.
JULIE M. GALLERY
15 Mill Street Building 37, Suite 103
Toronto ON M5A 3R6
T: 416 603 2626
E: info@juliemgallery.com
www.juliemgallery.com
Featuring work by Jiri Ladocha & Mats Nordstrom, Deganit Berest, Anat Betzer, Atsmon Ganor, Itamar Jobani, Shai Kremer
Join artists Jiri Ladocha & Mats Nordstrom at the opening of their inaugural show at the Julie M. Gallery. We are excited to branch out from Israeli contemporary art to include the Czech-born sculptor Ladocha & his life-long friend and sometimes collaborator Mats Nordstrom (originally from Sweden) to our roster of artists.
Through the Looking Glass is a group show that offers a glimpse into the future. It previews works by late-career artists who have just joined the gallery roster, Jiri Ladocha and Mats Nordstrom. Both are masters of their disciplines, slated for solo exhibitions at the Julie M. Gallery. Through the Looking Glass turns a critical lens on the boundaries of medium. Today, an artist can rarely be categorized as a painter, sculpture, or photographer. Instead, it is more common to work at points of intersection between the categories that traditionally organized art history. Czech-Canadian artist Jiri Ladocha toes the line between sculpture and experimental painting. Mats Nordstrom, originally from Sweden, transgresses the purist inclinations of photography.
Jiri Ladocha, Untitled (diptych), 2012, bent plywood and aluminum leaf
JIRI LADOCHA
Born in former Czechoslovakia, Jiri Ladocha creates sculptures and three-dimensional wall pieces that betray a tense dialectic between the rigid austerity of Minimalism and the romance of flowing organic lines. Crisp, sure-handed, and post-minimal, his creations reflect meticulous labor and decades of experience. Wood, glass, aluminum, fine metal leaf, plaster, graphite, and pigment are samples of the materials given new life through honed aesthetic sensibility, and reborn in Ladocha’s expert hands. Jiri Ladocha’s work is found in collections and museums throughout Europe and North America.
Mats Nordstrm, Untitled, Remnants series, 2011-2012, c-print
MATS NORDSTROM
Photographs by Mats Nordstrom are the product of an intuitive exploration of his emotional landscape—often they encapsulate moments from the artist’s past. Informed by a childhood in Sweden, Nordstrom’s recent work on view in Through the Looking Glass includes a series of high-contrast black and white photographs titled Remnants. Remnants explores the transformative effect of light and shadow on outmoded household utensils, shot against a marred aluminum sheet. Strong side-lighting throws crisp shadows, which lend these allegories of a simpler time three-dimensionality and a sharp graphic presence. Nordstrom’s artistic career was preceded by a background in mathematics and biochemical engineering, commercial photography in New York, and catalyzed by working on the Interview Magazine team with Andy Warhol. His work can be found in permanent collections including the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art and the London Museum of Fine Art.